1. About teams
Teams are groups of reeflings that take on certain functions within the broader project of building The Reef. We call “teams” what sociocracy calls “circles”.
Coordinating within each team and across the different teams can feel like a daunting job, so in The Reef we fall back onto digital tech to keep complexity manageable. In this discussion, later turned into a decision by the plenary meeting of 2022-06-30, we decided to use two channels: this forum for debate and documentation, and the workspace for shared documents, calendar events, tasks, and a chat function. In this post, I want to share how teams function in practice in the channels we choose.
2. Teams directory
As of 2022-07-04, there are 10 teams in The Reef. This is based on this file. There is also an 11th team, called “Reeflings”, which includes everybody. This is the digital equivalent of the plenary meetings.
You can find a list of teams in the Edgeryders forum going here:
https://edgeryders.eu/g?filter=reef
Alternatively, click on the hamburger menu next to your avatar and choose Groups, then scroll down or use the search box for groups that contain the word “reef”.
You can find a list of teams in Nexcloud workspace by clicking on your avatar, then choosing Users. The Groups appear as a list on the left side.
3. Naming conventions
In the interest of brevity (and for better user experience, since those names appear in drop-down menus etc.), the teams are indicated by their designation, without the word “team”. So, the Nextcloud group for Team Building is simply called “Building”. In the forum, I had to use reef-DESIGNATION, to avoid confusion with Edgeryders’ own IT, and so on. So, the forum group for Team Building is called @reef-building.
4. Teams in the forum: functionalities
In the forum, you can do two things with teams:
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Mention. This works by anteposing the character “@” to the group’s name, for example @reef-building or @reef-it, when you write a post on the forum. This sends an email notification to all members of the team. Everybody can do this with any group. @reeflings sends a notification to everyone.
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Direct message. You can send a direct message to the entire group even without writing a public post on the forum. Do do this, click on your avatar, then on the envelope icon, then on the down arrow at the bottom of the pop-up message. You can only do this to the groups you are a member of (but this can be changed in the group settings, if it is too restrictive).
Not everybody created an account yet, so the teams on the forum are not complete as of 2022-07-04. All teams have been created, but some are missing one member. I will get in touch individually with the relevant people.
5. Teams in the workspace: functionalities
In The Reef, we have a policy of sharing our entire document base with every single reefling. Our shared root folder is shared with the Reeflings group, so everyone can see all of its content. Nextcloud allows for quite sophisticated sharing options, but we do not use them. This leaves two things you can do with teams in our workspace.
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Chat. The Talk app on Nextcloud allows you to open a chat not only with individual users, but also with any group. To do so, click on
Talkin the menubar of the Nextcloud interface, then locate the relevant chat in the menu to the left. If there is none, click on the+icon to the top of the menu, then type the name of the team and create the chat. Nextcloud should notify all team members. -
Tasks. The Task Nextcloud apps, too, supports groups. You can create a team task list. To do so, open the app and click on
Add List, then type a name and choose a color. At this point, click on the share icon, and type the team’s name to share the list with all team members. Please note that it is not possible to invite teams to calendar events or to Deck cards: you need to invite each individual member.